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Friday, April 25, 2014

Boiling the frog

How can you possibly do all necessary type of training (cardio, lactate, endurance) when your parental duties allow you to have only one quality session a week?

Necessity is the mother of all invention. My solution was a workout I called “progression run” that was recently described in RW as "boiling the frog". The idea is to gradually increase the pace to a level that otherwise would have been difficult (physically and mentally) to sustain right from the start.

That's how I "boil the frog", almost always on the treadmill: I run the first kilometer at 6:00 min/km pace. The next one at 5:30 followed by: 5:00, 4:30, 4:16, 4:06, 4:00, 3:55, 3:50, 3:45. Done. Two-minute break. Time to refuel and change a shirt. On a good day I can squeeze tree repeats. This workout is sort of 3-in-1 combo. With my target race pace of 4:10, the distance run at pace of around 4 min/km constitutes a tempo run, the sub-4 kilometers are mostly cardio, and the overall distance of 30km hopefully provides a benefit of a long run.

BTW. The photo was taken by Helen in the Museum of Nature here in Ottawa. The museum had a special exhibit featuring frogs. We just learned that some of them were the most poisonous creatures on the planet, even more venomous than snakes or spiders.

Lesson learned: be careful when "boiling the frog", it's easy to overdo it!

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About Me

Running on Sunday morning has been a part of my weekly routine since 1997 when two of my friends and I went for a run (walk) around the Stanley Park in Vancouver on a cold, rainy day in October. Came home exhausted, soaked, starving, but somewhat happy. I was hooked. My first two full-marathons in 2003 and 2005 didn't go well. I have followed a more rigorous training program since and did much better finishing Vancouver and Portland in 2009, Boston and Chicago in 2010, Eugene and New York in 2011, Berlin in 2012, Ottawa and Toronto in 2013, Ottawa and Washington in 2014. My favorite run is a 5K "commute-to-work" run along the canal here in Ottawa . Hope some of my posts on this blog will help other runners stay injury free, train better and run faster.
Run Strong!
Jacek Gorwa, RPB Editor